Review: A Lusty Camelot, With Shades of The West Wing, From Aaron Sorkin

“Boring” is the word that most often pops into people’s heads when they think of Lerner and Loewe’s 1960 musical Camelot. Hardly an oft-revived classic like My Fair Lady, Camelot, an adaptation of the King Arthur myth as told by T.H. White in The Once and Future King, is generally known for being endlessly long and humorless, despite being a favorite of President Kennedy and having launched the career of crooner Robert Goulet (he played Lancelot opposite Richard Burton as Arthur and Julie Andrews as Guenevere). Not quite even a staple of schools and amateur groups anymore, Camelot is rarely seen in its original form.

For Lincoln Center Theater’s current production, Camelot‘s first Broadway appearance in 30 years, the Arthurian legend has been given a makeover by Aaron Sorkin. Sorkin’s new book, directed with customary grace and propulsion by Bartlett Sher, is a page-one rewrite of Alan Jay Lerner’s original. He keeps the core ideas and score (with music by Frederick Loewe) intact, but populates this time-bending England with human beings struggling to build a democratic future, rather than a kingdom imbued by magical intervention. Your personal enjoyment will probably hinge on your taste for Sorkinese — if a traditionalist ye be, you’ll probably balk at the liberties he’s taken and the more than a handful of character arcs that differ from what they once were. If you do happen to enjoy Sorkin’s brand of fast, impassioned, quippy repartee, that B-word will never once cross your mind.

Indeed, this Camelot, which I admittedly could not muster up much enthusiasm for upon entering the Vivian Beaumont Theater, was surprisingly engaging. It feels like bingeing four episodes of The West Wing, with a handful of extremely pretty songs that are gorgeously delivered by the 27-person cast and 30-player orchestra. The warmth and idealism of that beloved television series translates well to this material, which is, essentially, a love triangle between Arthur (Andrew Burnap), a King filled with self-doubt; his headstrong, arranged French bride Guenevere (Phillipa Soo); and an absolute hunk named Lancelot (Jordan Donica), who arrives in this “most congenial” kingdom from France after hearing that Arthur has begun assembling an order of soldiers whose deeds are based in chivalry and goodness.

Sorkin and Sher are heavily invested in this central storyline, filling a tried-and-true will they/won’t they/of course they will plot with a surprising amount of gravity. That arc is complicated by the existence of scientist Morgan Le Fay (a witchy Marilee Talkington), who happens to be the super-ex that Arthur is still obsessed with, and the mother to his illegitimate child, Mordred (Taylor Trensch).

Despite Trench’s sliminess, the Mordred arc doesn’t work here as well as it should; to be fair, it’s under thought in the original and the film, too. He shifts the whole course of the show with about 20 minutes of stage time, but there needs to be a little more investment for it to really work. There are hints sprinkled throughout that the optimism of President Bartlett’s cabinet – I mean, King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table — is wearing off, but the lighthearted tone shifts so quickly that it’s hard to get back on track. And considering that the production is pushing three hours, Sorkin definitely could have devoted more time to fleshing it out.

As expected, Sher and his creative team paint some stunning stage pictures. There are no major coups here – no stage floor that retracts à la South Pacific — but the designers nonetheless create an Arthurian kingdom that’s beautifully austere and capitalizes on the vastness of the Beaumont stage. The centerpiece of Michael Yeargan’s stately, marble-arched set is a floor-to-ceiling video wall that allows projection designer 59 Productions to change locales with ease.

In one extraordinary moment late in the second half (the “Fie on Goodness,” sequence), Sher manages to create the theatrical equivalent of jump cuts back and forth between Guenevere’s bedchamber, Morgan’s castle, and Mordred’s scullery hideout, all within a few lines of dialogue and lyric. The effect, aided by the shadowy, romantic lighting supplied by Lap Chi Chu, is stunning. Jennifer Moeller’s costumes — particularly Soo’s outfits that include leather pants and boots upon her arrival in the kingdom, a deep burgundy velvet gown in the court, and a pink and floral off-the-shoulder dress for the “Lusty Month of May”/”Take Me to the Fair” sequence — sumptuously tell their own stories, too.

In 2022, Broadway stages were filled with performers who were less than suited for their roles in a vocal capacity; not so here. Soo and Donica have classic Broadway voices that gloriously fill the auditorium. You can practically hear all the men and women sigh when Donica wraps his deep baritone around “If Ever I Would Leave You,” while Soo’s soprano handles numbers like “The Simple Joys of Maidenhood” and “Before I Gaze at You Again” with crystal clarity (Marc Salzberg and Beth Lake’s sound design is nigh-perfect, too).

Burnap, a well-deserved Tony winner for The Inheritance, is the night’s finest acting turn. He gives us an Arthur filled with inner conflict about whether he deserves a position he knows he lucked into, and over the course of the night, he grows in strength until he eventually becomes the brave King that literature knows him to be. His is an excellently rounded transformation.

That the three of them have bedroom eyes is a bonus. Camelot is a love story, after all, and we definitely swoon. But not only that: this production is a very welcome journey into a land of courage and integrity, something that our own world is in very short supply of.